


Glitch in the System: Out of the Bag

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 20:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11997510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By E.The cat goes missing.Widowmaker is passively heartbreaking.Nostalgia and overdramatic tripe happens.





	Glitch in the System: Out of the Bag

Widowmaker walked around the back of where Sombra was working, resting her head on her crossed arms along the high back of the chair as she’d become inclined to do. Their increased time together had brought an odd sort of familiarity to their interactions, and while neither would deign to call themselves ‘friends,’ it would not be too far of a reach to consider them, from time to time, friendly.

“What are you doing?” Widowmaker asked, her ever-present bored tone of voice spiking into a moment of curiosity.

“Research,” Sombra replied evasively, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from curling upwards mischievously. A series of numbers flew into view across her screen, at which point she deftly typed one in at the top that was ten thousand more than the one before it.

Canting her head to the side, Widowmaker squinted. “Is that Hana Song’s game?” she asked as a cavalcade of neon colors streamed before her.

“Yep.”

The sniper frowned. “Are you hacking an Overwatch operative’s,” she paused, “game scores?”

“Sure am,” Sombra replied, self-satisfied grin now firmly in place.

“I didn’t realize you were so petty.”

“Yes you did, Lacroix. That’s just about the one thing I’m sure you do know about me.” Swiping her hand over the console, she collapsed it into her signature skull before it disappeared in a wisp of purple binary. “She’ll beat it eventually. I’m just resting on a moment of solace knowing I vexed Overwatch’s youngest recruit.”

Widowmaker closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Did you sanction this, Gabriel?”

Gabe looked up from his silent position on the couch, sipping a cup of coffee and reading from one of the local papers on his datapad. He said he liked to keep tabs on regional politics, but Sombra saw him reading the comics and opinions when he thought no one was watching. “Do you think I sanction anything she does?”

“A fair point.”

Widowmaker waited until Gabe went back to reading before leaning down close to the hacker’s ear. “Toulouse is missing,” she said, the whisper as effortless as a shot to the head.

 _“Que?!”_  Sombra replied, jumping from the chair, swatting away Widowmaker’s careful efforts at discretion with one wayward verbal backhand.

“Sombra?” Gabe asked, glancing up for a second time, and looking even less pleased about it than the first.

“Nothing. Awful joke. Everything’s fine but Widow’s sense of humor.” Snatching Widowmaker’s hand, she dragged the surprised woman to the foot of the stairs, up to the second floor, and over to her bedroom where the door was cracked just enough for a small feline to slip through.

“ _Qué pasó_ , Lacroix?” Sombra asked, looking at the door.

“I suppose he grew opposable thumbs,” was Widowmaker’s apathetic reply. Sombra scowled, and she backed off. “I don’t know. I came up to see him and the door was open.”

Sombra raised a finger to begin a lecture about making certain the door was  _always_  shut behind her when she paused. “You went to see him?” she asked, looking with quizzical interest at the sniper.

Widowmaker looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I told you I would help you take care of him.”

“You didn’t say you came here to feed him, you said you came to  _see_  him.”

“Why are we parsing semantics, Sombra? Last I checked, your cat was missing, and Gabriel has made it very clear once he found out that he was not to leave our sight.”

“I’ll start on the east wing. You take the west.” Disappearing into a shimmer of light, Sombra vanished before Widowmaker could object.

She looked for what felt like most of the day, but was likely only an hour or two before she gave up, accepting that her kitten had either run off or gotten lost within the winding halls of the mansion. It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected this day to come - after all, the likelihood she’d have to give Toulouse up when Talon’s next move came was a constant looming reality - but she still felt a tug of pain at losing the one thing she had that she hadn’t stolen from someone else. Toulouse was better off with her than wandering the streets; a reality she empathized with on a deeply personal level. Neither of them really had anything of their own. Nothing permanent, at least.

When she returned to her room, the door had been flung wide open. For a moment she worried Gabe had found Toulouse and thrown him out, scouring her room for the rest of his supplies to dissuade her ‘rogue ambitions.’ When she entered, what she found instead was the sniper laying on the ground at the foot of her bed, Toulouse perched happily on her stomach, gently kneading with his small, soft paws. Widowmaker was watching him with an intensity Sombra had never seen on her face, looking like she was struggling with some deep thought unrelated to her usual musings.

“I thought you didn’t like cats,” Sombra said, leaning against the door jam and crossing her arms as she looked down at the prone woman.

“I don’t,” Widowmaker replied, and Sombra was surprised she wasn’t scrambling to stand up and escape from the vulnerability she presented. She stroked Toulouse behind the ears and watched the way his whiskers twitched as he purred, fascinated by the smallness of the tiny creature.

Toulouse, for his part, was loving it.

“Well, he definitely likes to be near you,” Sombra said. Stepping into the room, she shut the door behind her to prevent the cat from escaping again, the question of how he had escaped in the first place left unanswered and forgotten.

Widowmaker sat up and tilted her head at the cat as he readjusted himself on her lap. “Nothing has ever wanted to be near me,” she stated as a devastating, deadpan fact. “Not now.”

As was typical, Sombra’s tongue was quicker than her thoughts. “That’s not true,” she blurted, feeling immediately uncomfortable. For someone who prided herself in expertly manipulating others, she was certainly bad at controlling herself. “I mean, I’ve enjoyed our walks.” Her words felt lame and cumbersome and she wasn’t entirely sure where she was going with them, so she shut her mouth.

Strangers were so much easier to deal with than coworkers.

“I know what I am, Sombra,” Widowmaker said, no regret in her voice - only a sharp sort of certainty. “I am a tool; a weapon. I kill those I am tasked to kill and think nothing of it. It seems,” she looked down at the contented animal now laying down, a yawn momentarily taking over his face, “that perhaps I should think something of it, but can’t.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an orphaned hacker with an inflated ego and poor judgment.” She grinned and tentatively placed herself next to where the sniper sat at the foot of the bed, back against the hard wooden frame. It was uncomfortable, but she tried not to care, running a hand through the kitten’s fur. Toulouse purred more loudly at the proximity of two humans now paying him attention. Sombra diverted her eyes to the small animal, trying to ignore the chill coming off Widowmaker’s skin pressing against her side.

“You want to, I dunno,” she shrugged after the silence became deafening, “watch something?”

“Sure,” Widowmaker replied with uncharacteristic resignation. Sombra generated a holographic remote control in the palm of her left hand and activated the TV she’d made Gabe get her for her room. Swiping a finger along the screen she’d conjured, she navigated through the channels, the unfamiliar Italian TV flashing before their eyes as she sought for anything that might be, if nothing else, visually entertaining. After several minutes of futile effort, she stumbled across something that made her heart skip with nostalgia.

“Oh, it’s like childhood all over again,” she exclaimed, leaning forward as the opening music from a telenovela rerun began. “My friend’s abuela would always have these on in the livingroom, whether she was watching them or not. It was just an endless loop of  _qué has hecho?_ , and  _estoy embarazada_ , and  _habia un acidente._ ” She rubbed at her temples. “I’ll bet I can still sing along with most of the theme songs, although I’ll be damned if I remember shit about the plot.”

“I did not watch TV growing up,” Widowmaker said, frowning. “Or at least I don’t remember it.”

“Well today’s your lucky day,” Sombra said, gesturing at the TV. “Look at this overdramatic tripe. It’s  _amazing_.”

Widowmaker acquiesced without retort, watching with a singular intensity that Sombra had only ever seen as she peered down the scope of a rifle. “ _Mon dieu_ ,” she said after several tense minutes had passed, staring with rapt interest.

“What?” Sombra asked, looking from the TV to the sniper

“This ‘overdramatic tripe’ of yours. It is  _just like ballet_.”

Sombra laughed. “Yeah? You’ll have to show me some time,” she said, not expecting that day to ever come.

Widowmaker turned to look at her for a moment, her eyes searching Sombra’s face for…something. “Perhaps some day,” she said.

They sat back against the foot of the bed, Toulouse fast asleep between them, and finished the show.


End file.
